Recipe: Carrot Cake with lime and mascarpone icing

Carrot cake is a quintessentially classic British cake, and accompanied with a cup of tea this sweet treat really hits the spot. This little gem of a recipe maintains the lusciously jam packed sponge and jazzes up the icing to give the cake a fresh summer kick.

So without wasting any more time:

For the Sponge you will need:

250g softened butter

250g brown sugar (light)

170g self-raising flour

5 large eggs separated into yolks and whites (you will need both parts)

1 heaped tsp baking powder

250g carrots, peeled and grated

1 orange, zest and juice

100g ground almonds

100g walnuts, chopped (plus a few extra to decorate)

1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon

1 pinch ground clove

1 pinch ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground ginger

For the Lime Mascarpone Icing:

100g Mascarpone cheese

200g full-fat cream cheese (full fat is very important, otherwise the consistency will be too runny)

85g icing sugar

2 limes, zest and juice

Method:

First things first, get that oven pre-heated at 180°

Tin Talk: You can either put all the cake mixture into one tin and bake it that way, but there is the risk, due to the cakes depth, of it becoming burnt on the outside and raw in the middle. So, to avoid this, use two equally sized cake tins and split the batter evenly between the two. The cakes will cook evenly and there is minimal chance of burning the outsides.

Grease and line your two cake tins with greaseproof paper.

In a large mixing bowl (to avoid being splattered) beat the butter and sugar together with an electric whisk until pale and fluffy. You can do this by hand, however it will take much longer.

Beat in the egg yolks one by one using the electric whisk and add the orange juice and zest.